CAILS - Central Asian Interactive Listening Series

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CAILS Lessons now completed. Ten Kazak lessons and ten Uzbek lessons targeting advanced-level listening are now available for free use on our website. Learn more>

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CAILS (Central Asian Interactive Listening Series) is the first phase of an initiative led by Professor Uli Schamiloglu, University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, to expand the U.S. national capacity in critical Turkic languages of Central Asia. The project aims to provide cross-language training for students of languages in this region of growing global geopolitical importance and strategic significance for the United States.

The goal of the CAILS project is to develop and disseminate a series twenty online lessons designed to enable students with an intermediate level of proficiency in a Central Asian Turkic language to achieve advanced-level listening comprehension in Kazak or Uzbek. The lessons will be freely available online for educational use by individuals and institutions around the world.

The CAILS lessons are content-based, focusing on topics related to Uzbek and Kazak history, politics, religion, culture, education, economics, language, and social issues. The lessons are designed around excerpts from videotaped interviews conducted by CAILS Associate Director Talant Mawkanuli in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the U.S. with prominent scholars, government officials, politicians, students, and leaders in business.